A Poor Wise Man
1920
A Poor Wise Man is Mary Roberts Rinehart's often-overlooked masterwork of social fiction, a novel that proves she was far more than the "Queen of Crime." Set in an industrial American city scarred by smoke and promise, it follows Lily Cardew as she returns from army camp to a family and a world she no longer recognizes. Her grandfather Anthony still commands the household with iron will, but something has shifted. Lily has seen a different America, one of immigrants laboring in shadowed mills and workers dreaming of dignity. As she navigates the strained dynamics of her household, she must choose between the safety of her legacy and the messy, vital world beyond its doors. Rinehart paints the city in stark contrasts: blackened walls beside fairy-tale bridges, gray smoke that sometimes catches gold. This is a novel about what we inherit, what we reject, and whether either choice sets us free.
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“She had the theory of youth about love, that it was a violent thing, tempestuous and passionate. She thought that love demanded, not knowing that love gives first, and then asks.””
— Mary Roberts Rinehart
“There are lies and lies. Now and then the Great Recorder must put one on the credit side of the balance, one that has saved intolerable suffering, or has made well and happy a sick soul.””
— Mary Roberts Rinehart
“The old vicious cycle of empires threatened to repeat itself, the old story of the many led by the few. Always it had come, autocracy, the too great power of one man; then anarchy, the overthrow of that power by the angry mob. Out of that anarchy the gradual restoration of order by the people themselves, into democracy. And then in time again, by that steady gravitation of the strong up and the weak down, some one man who emerged from the mass and crowned himself, or was crowned. And there was autocracy again, and again the vicious circle.””
— Mary Roberts Rinehart
